U.S. Offers $10 Million Reward for Pakistani Militant Tied to Mumbai Attacks

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The United States has announced a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture of Hafiz Saeed, a Pakistani militant leader accused of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks, who in recent months has emerged at the vanguard of a prominent anti-American lobbying group.

Wendy R. Sherman, the United States under secretary of state for political affairs, announced the reward for Mr. Saeed, described as the leader of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, during a visit to India on Monday. She also announced a reward of $2 million for information leading to the capture of Hafiz Abdul Rahman Makki, Mr. Saeed’s brother-in-law.

The reward was welcomed by Ms. Sherman’s Indian hosts, who have long pressed Pakistan to imprison or extradite Mr. Saeed. A spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs said it was a “strong signal” to Lashkar-e-Taiba and evidence of growing security cooperation between the United States and India. The Mumbai attacks killed at least 163 people.

But the reward is likely to further strain relations with Pakistan, which are currently being renegotiated after a border clash in November in which American warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. And it met with a contemptuous reception among Mr. Saeed’s supporters, one of whom described the reward as an “April Fool’s joke” and ridiculed the notion that Mr. Saeed was a hunted man.

“Hafiz Saeed and his aides are not fugitives,” said Hafiz Muhammad Masood, the central information secretary of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a religious charity that serves as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba and that lists Mr. Saeed as its founder and leader. “They are not living a secret life. They are living in Pakistan as free members of society.”

The Rewards for Justice program, administered by the State Department, has paid a total of $100 million to 70 informants who helped track down criminals since 1984. But the case of Mr. Saeed, a 61-year-old former engineering professor, is unusual because his whereabouts are not a mystery.

Unlike other figures at the top of the list, like the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, who carries a $25 million reward, or the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, for whom $10 million is posted, Mr. Saeed is not thought to be on the run in the lawless areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Instead, the heavy-set, bearded jihadist lives in plain sight in the bustling eastern city of Lahore, running his operations from a sprawling compound on the edge of the city.

He appeared live on several television channels on Tuesday evening, deriding the American bounty as a “foolish step” that had been orchestrated by Pakistan’s archenemy, India. “There has not been a single police report against me anywhere in Pakistan,” he said.

The American move may have been motivated by Mr. Saeed’s high profile in the Defense of Pakistan Council, a right-wing lobbying group that draws together jihadist militant groups, religious parties and conservative politicians, and which has conducted major rallies in cities across Pakistan since January. Its aim is to influence a major debate on Pakistan-United States ties that is currently under way in Parliament, and in particular to prevent the reopening of NATO supply lines that have been closed since November.

Photo

Hafiz Saeed, at center in a 2011 photograph, is the leader of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.Credit
Aamir Qureshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Defense of Pakistan Council rallies, which are characterized by virulent anti-American speeches and gun-toting stewards, have alarmed Western diplomats and many Pakistanis; and the ease with which they have been organized has stoked news media suspicions that the group enjoys tacit support from the military and its powerful intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, possibly as a means of pressing Washington.

Stephen Tankel, an assistant professor at American University in Washington and author of a book on Lashkar-e-Taiba, said the reward’s immediate goal could be to diminish Mr. Saeed’s profile. “I see this naming and shaming as a way of putting pressure on Pakistan,” he said. “It seems that the U.S. is concerned with Saeed’s appearances at rallies and wants the ISI to put him back in a box.”

In many ways, Mr. Saeed embodies one of Pakistan’s greatest problems of the past decades: the struggle to rein in homegrown militant groups that flourished under the military’s protection — or at least its blind eye.

The former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, banned Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002, but it quickly re-emerged under the guise of its charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Attempts to prosecute Mr. Saeed for what is said to be his role in various attacks have failed, as have efforts to restrict his movements through house arrest. He has been on a list of people and groups linked to terrorism and subject to United Nations sanctions since 2008.

The greatest problem lies in his ambiguous relationship with the ISI, which nurtured Lashkar-e-Taiba in the 1990s to fight Indian soldiers in Indian-occupied Kashmir. Over the past decade, the militant group has expanded its activities to include attacks on Indian civilians, Western tourists and Jewish clerics. In Afghanistan, its militants have emerged as a factor in the war in the east.

ISI officials insist they effectively lost control of the group after cutting their ties to it in 2002. But they have also failed to stop its fund-raising and recruitment through Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which has run substantial charity operations across Pakistan, particularly after an earthquake in 2005 and widespread floods in 2010.

Attempts to prosecute Lashkar-e-Taiba for the Mumbai attacks have produced scant results. Seven people were indicted in late 2009, but none have been convicted. Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the operational commander accused of masterminding the assault, is in jail, but efforts to prosecute him have been characterized by an opaque legal process.

Mr. Tankel said he had learned that some subordinate commanders had paid prison visits to Mr. Lakhvi. “There’s a strong sense the powers that be are happy to have him in jail but still somewhat operational,” he said.

It is unclear whether the $10 million American reward would succeed in sidelining Mr. Saeed, he added. “The rules of the game in Pakistan mitigate against him being taken off the street and put in jail.” he said. “Whether a pressure campaign right now is a good idea or not is debatable.”

At recent rallies of the Defense of Pakistan Council, Jamaat-ud-Dawa activists have provided security while Mr. Saeed sat on the podium alongside Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief and prominent jihadi ideologue. The question now is whether the $10 million American bounty will alter that lineup.

Waqar Gilani contributed reporting from Lahore, Pakistan, and Jim Yardley from New Delhi.

A version of this article appears in print on April 4, 2012, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Offers $10 Million Reward for Pakistani Militant Tied to Mumbai Attacks. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe